


Last of the Breed

by San Antonio Rose (ramblin_rosie)



Series: SPN Wild West AU [1]
Category: Supernatural, The Shootist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Historical, Cancer, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on LiveJournal, Episode: s06e18 Frontierland, Gen, SPN Cinema Challenge (Supernatural & Supernatural RPF)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27616559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramblin_rosie/pseuds/San%20Antonio%20Rose
Summary: It's 1901, and the aging Winchester brothers are facing perhaps their most mundane--and permanent--cause of death yet: inoperable cancer. All they want is to spend their last days in peace and to die with their dignity intact. But when have they ever gotten exactly what they wanted?
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: SPN Wild West AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021962





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Fusion with _The Shootist_ , written for SPN Cinema. AU from "Frontierland," with some oblique references to Season 7.
> 
> Disclaimer regarding content: Nothing you recognize, or could potentially recognize, is mine. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> Disclaimer regarding characters: The role I've split between Sam and Dean in this story is filled by one character in the movie, played by John Wayne. There is a minor female character in the movie, played by Sheree North, with whom he has an established past relationship; in this story, it made more sense to pair that character with Sam than with Dean. It wasn't until I'd made that decision, written the scene, and gone back to revise it while watching the movie with the closed captioning on that I discovered that I'd misheard the character's nickname; the correct spelling turned out to be the same as the name of a well-known RL Sam-girl.  
>  _That resemblance is 100% coincidental and goes no further than the name._ Neither the portrayal of that character nor Dean's opinion of her should be construed as being a comment on the RL woman who shares her (nick)name.  
>    
> _Further disclaimer upon importing this fic to AO3 on 11/20/2020: If you're still torn up over the finale, please don't read this fic--unless you need a good hard cry, in which case, be my guest!_

March 5, 1861

“Dean!” cried Sam, and Dean’s gloating over the shootout flipped to all-out panic as he realized their time was almost up. He dove for the phoenix’s ashes, scooped up a bottleful... and nothing happened.

Dean swallowed hard and looked at Sam. “Get some more bottles—maybe he’s just late.”

Sam nodded and dashed to the saloon, where Elkins hurriedly gave him a few more empty bottles and followed Sam back outside with an armful of his own. The three men quickly had as much of the ash bottled as they could safely gather without getting dirt mixed in. And still there was no flash to carry the Winchesters back to their own day.

“Something’s wrong,” Sam muttered, looking at his watch, which caused Elkins to stare in astonishment.

“Like, Raphael?”

“Maybe? Or maybe not. I don’t... I don’t know why, but I’ve got this really weird feeling that we’ve been shanghaied.”

Dean huffed. “C’mon, dude, this is _Cas_. He wouldn’t just leave us here.”

Sam met his eyes. “Wouldn’t he?”

* * *

March 5, 2012

Balthazar was pacing when Castiel finally answered his summons. “What is it, brother?” Castiel asked.

“Your pets,” Balthazar replied. “They’ve fallen off the radar. I... wanted to find out what they remembered about the _Titanic_ fiasco, but I can’t find them. At all.”

Castiel frowned. “You know they’re hidden.”

“Yes, but their dreams aren’t—or shouldn’t be.” Balthazar walked up to Castiel. “Cas, what have you done with them?”

Castiel sighed deeply. “I have... made a tactical error. Dean located a phoenix in the past that they could kill in order to devise a weapon that will kill Eve, and I thought I would be able to retrieve them after 24 hours. But I was ambushed by one of Raphael’s supporters and was not able to recover in time to bring them back.”

“What year?”

“Balthazar, it doesn’t matter. Even if I told you, you might not be able to find them from this remove.”

Balthazar studied him for a moment and then nodded slowly. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.”

“That’s the way it _is_ ,” Castiel replied sharply.

Balthazar nodded again and left. But rather than going back to the mansion he’d appropriated for himself, he flew to the nearest library and began searching like a human would, the best way to keep his inquiries from coming to Castiel’s attention. Finally, he found information that had him swearing quietly under his breath.

And then he took off after Bobby Singer.

He found the Winchesters’ oldest and dearest friend in Battle Creek, MI, steeling himself to inform Lisa and Ben Braeden of Dean’s disappearance. Balthazar somehow managed to convince Bobby to take him along, and once they were all together and Bobby had given the Braedens the bad news, Balthazar revealed his addition.

“I’m not certain exactly what dear Cassie is up to,” he said slowly, “but I suspect he deliberately stranded the lads in the past. He wouldn’t let me try to retrieve them myself—won’t even tell me what year he sent them to. And he’s powerful enough now that I don’t dare cross him openly on something like this. But I’ve found some newspaper articles that place the Winchesters in Carson City, Nevada, in January of 1901.”

Bobby stifled a curse. “That’s a thousand miles and forty years away from where he dropped ’em.”

“That’s not the worst of it. Unless I miss my guess, if either Eve or Hell’s forces have cause to try to smoke the lads out, they’ll come after the Braedens. Regardless of whether Cas wanted the Winchesters safe or only out of his way, he’s not thought through the implications.”

Lisa put an arm around Ben’s shoulders. “So what should we do?”

Balthazar shrugged. “The surest way to keep you safe is to send you after the lads. Where did they go?”

Bobby sighed. “Sunrise, WY. March of 1861.”

Ben’s eyes widened, and Lisa blanched.

Balthazar shook his head. “No, that’s no good—they’d face more than twice the natural dangers even with the lads on hand for protection. Not very good odds the Winchesters will want to stay in a grubby little town like Sunrise any longer than they have to, either.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Lisa, could you run a small boarding house if you had to, tell people you’re a widow?”

Lisa shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Might take a few years for the lads to find you, and they’d be older than you remember. But I can guarantee you a telephone and running water, indoor bathroom, even electricity within a few years.”

“Where and when?”

“Carson City, 1895. It would be a one-way trip, but it would keep you out of the line of fire.”

Ben was clearly skeptical, but Lisa drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Ben’s safety has to be my first priority. I’ll... find a way to survive.”

Balthazar nodded. “All right. I can’t give you long to prepare, but I can give you... three days.”

“Three days. Okay. We’ll be ready.”

As hunter and angel walked away from the Braeden house and back to Bobby’s truck, Bobby asked, “What didn’t you tell them about those articles?”

Balthazar pretended offense. “Withhold information? I?”

“Balthazar....”

Balthazar sighed. “The last one... was an obituary. For both lads.”


	2. Chapter 1: The Sunset Trail

_Their names were Sam and Dean Winchester, and they were like a matched pair of .45s with antique ivory grips—truly something to behold. But they weren’t outlaws (at least, not here). Fact is, for a while, they were lawmen._

_Long before I met the Winchesters, they were famous men in the hunting world. They were famous everywhere by the time I met them again. I guess their fame was why somebody or other was always after them. But hunting had taught them to survive. They lived their lives and hunted by themselves. They had a credo that went: “We won’t be wronged; we won’t be insulted; and we won’t be laid a hand on. We don’t do these things to other people, and we require the same from them.”_

—from the journal of Ben Braeden

Samuel Colt came through Sunrise that night to check on Sam, return Sam’s Blackberry, and officially pass the gun and the demon-killing knife on to the Winchesters. Dean started to refuse, but Sam suggested the compromise of letting Elkins keep the weapons until they knew for sure that they were stuck. Yet no sooner did Dean accept than Bobby walked in, looking like a character from _Deadwood_. After an exchange of pleasantries and farewells, Colt left and Elkins made himself scarce, and Bobby gave the boys the bad news that Cas had indeed stranded them, apparently deliberately.

After a round of curses, Sam said, “But wait, how’d you....”

“Balthazar,” Bobby replied. “Cas had all but forbidden him from bringing you back, and he didn’t dare cross Cas. But there was no way I was leavin’ you idjits out here alone.”

Dean sighed. “Bobby....”

“Save it, son. You need me more than I need to spend my days mannin’ the phones and tryin’ not to count my losses. Balthazar gave me time to make arrangements—including calling in one last favor from Ellie Visyak.”

“Which was?”

“A microfilm camera and a portable microfilm viewer.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “You microfilmed your _library?_ ”

Bobby shrugged. “Not the stuff that’s in print now, but the rare stuff, yeah, and the Campbell journals. No way to charge the battery on a Kindle, or I’d’ve just scanned it all. And I brought as much of your arsenal and my arsenal as the pack mule could carry, plus John’s journal and mine—which also includes the secret of how to fix that,” he added, pointing to the Colt.

Dean grinned. “Bobby, you are awesome.”

“Pack mule,” Sam repeated. “Does—does that mean you brought horses?”

Bobby nodded. “Yup. And a special one for Dean.”

“You didn’t,” they chorused.

“No, I didn’t. That one was a favor Balthazar called in from Kali.”

Dean dashed outside, Sam hard on his heels, to see a big black mare with a silver blaze and four silver-white stockings looking at him expectantly. He walked up to her, and she whickered softly and pushed her nose into his hand.

“Dude,” Sam breathed.

“Baby?” Dean asked.

The horse nodded.

Dean looked back at Sam, grinning almost giddily. “Dude. My baby’s a _horse_.”

Grinning back, Sam shook his head in wonder. “Wow.”

“Guaranteed to live as long as you do, too,” Bobby added.

Dean rubbed the horse’s nose for a moment longer before sighing and turning back to the others as his smile faded. “So. What do we do now?”

* * *

It took a good deal of consideration and deliberation on the part of the three hunters, but eventually they concluded that no one else in town was willing or qualified to take over as sheriff. So they stayed, Bobby and Sam becoming Dean’s deputies, until the effects of the Civil War and an untimely Crow raid dealt a fatal blow to the town. Elkins married Darla and moved to Colorado, and Bobby, Dean, and Sam entrusted the phoenix ash to the Campbells and went back to hunting full time. The hunts they knew they could take care of in that century were knocked out within a decade, along with a number of others that came to their attention—and Azazel, when by chance (if chance it was) their paths crossed. And they quickly became legendary, not only as hunters but also as gunmen when outlaws were foolish enough to try to cross them.

Bobby died in his sleep in 1880, apparently of natural causes. Sam and Dean mourned his passing, but it was not nearly the crushing grief they would have felt had he died on a hunt, and there was no need to avenge him. And both brothers avoided giving into the urge to drown their pain in alcohol and hunting.

Age did eventually take its toll, and the Winchesters did have their share of health scares and serious injuries. The worst was when Sam was wounded in a gunfight in Carson City in 1886, but his life was saved by a doctor named E. W. Hostetler who knew about hunting and was willing to accept the idea that the wounds had been made by bullets cursed by a witch specifically to kill Sam. Hostetler thus earned the brothers’ trust and undying gratitude. But by the time they were both past retirement age for a white-collar job and were practically ancient for men in their line of work, they had not only slowed down but started feeling lousy more often than not.

Neither Sam nor Dean had ever been a particularly good patient, and both hated to admit to illness, but neither could hide his own ailments from the other. So when both of them started noticing signs of illness in each other as 1900 drew to a close, they agreed to spend Christmas with the Elkins family in Creede, Colorado, and to see a doctor while they were there. No sooner did they leave the doctor’s office, however, than they packed their gear, leaving most of the arsenal with the Elkinses, and headed to Carson City. They hadn’t been back there since the ’86 hunt, but they needed a good second opinion, and Hostetler was just about the only doctor west of Dodge they knew for sure they could trust.

The brothers arrived in Carson City on January 17, 1901. The city had grown and changed considerably in the last fifteen years, however, and they paused to try to navigate through a new part of town that they hadn’t seen before, totally unaware that they were blocking traffic until someone on a wagon hollered, “Hey, old timers, get out of the way!”

Dean looked around at the wagon—a dairy wagon, driven by an ill-favored blond guy whose passenger bore a striking resemblance to Ben. “You talkin’ to me?” he replied, dusting off his Robert De Niro voice for the first time in a couple of decades.

The kid who looked like Ben startled a little.

“Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Methuselah,” returned the driver. “I said get out of the way, or I’ll deliver you somethin’ to remember me by.”

Dean took his hat off. “Well, pardon me.” He looked at Sam and nodded over his shoulder, and they backed up in tandem. But then, as the delivery wagon started forward, he added, “Buster.”

The wagon driver stopped with a scowl and reached for his handgun. Dean just raised an eyebrow at him.

The kid who looked like Ben nudged the driver’s shoulder. “C’mon, Jay, the old men ain’t worth the bullets. They look all tuckered out,” he continued with a chuckle.

The driver considered this and laughed himself, then drove away. Dean replaced his hat and watched them go.

“Dean...” said Sam.

Dean nodded. “I know. But the kid’s right about one thing.”

Sam snorted, and they continued on their way to Hostetler’s house.

Hostetler looked a lot older than Dean remembered, but then, so did the Winchesters. Sam’s hair was as silver as the doc’s, and Dean’s was a steel grey, as were the mustache and triangle of beard he’d started wearing to hide the scars from where a rabid skinwalker had clawed him. But Hostetler’s eyes lit with recognition as soon as he opened the door.

“Doc Hostetler,” said Dean by way of greeting.

“Sam and Dean Winchester,” Hostetler replied with a slight smile and a hand extended for shaking.

“You remembered.”

“The newspapers occasionally remind me. Wh-what was it, fifteen years ago?” The slight stammer reminded Dean of Jimmy Stewart.

“Only time I was ever hit by a human in the last forty years,” Sam said as they followed Hostetler into his office. “Right here in the Acme Saloon.”

“You killed two men.”

“Two wannabe warlocks, and I’m damn lucky you were around. That second one nearly did me in, comin’ out of nowhere like that.”

“You must have the constitution of an ox. You too, Dean.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Dean returned, setting out two cushions on the doctor’s couch. “That’s what we’re here for.”

“Oh?”

Sam sat down with a groan, and Dean sat down beside him before meeting Hostetler’s eyes. “About ten days ago, up in Creede, Colorado, Sam hadn’t been feelin’ up to snuff—”

“Neither had you, Dean,” Sam interrupted.

“So I took him to a doctor there.”

“And I made sure he looked at Dean, too.”

“He, uh... well, next day we headed here for a second opinion.”

Hostetler leaned back in his chair. “And what did my colleague in Creede say?”

“Examine us and we’ll tell you.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Oh, Doc, you saved Sammy’s life.”

“You don’t trust my profession.”

“In _our_ profession, you trust too much, you don’t celebrate many birthdays.”

“We’re not in a hurry to die again,” Sam added.

Hostetler smiled in gentle amusement and stood. “All right, I’ll examine you both. Take your clothes off, down to your long johns.”

The brothers followed the doctor back to his examining room and started to comply.

“Now, I, uh... if I’m to examine you, you’ve got to tell me what... what’s ailin’ you.”

Sam sighed. “Well, I hurt, Doc, way down _deep_ in my back. Not all the time, but now and then suddenly.”

“Pain in the lumbar vertebrae?”

Dean nodded. “Like sin.”

“You’re the same?”

“Yeah.”

Hostetler nodded and unfolded a chair into an examining table before going to wash his hands. “All right, whenever you get ready, just... bend over the table there, trap door down.”

Both brothers raised an eyebrow at that but did as they were told.

It was getting dark in the house by the time Hostetler finished his examination and consulted his medical books, and he switched on a lamp—one of the few electric lights the Winchesters had seen since they’d been stranded in Sunrise. They finished getting dressed and went back into the office and sat down.

“Well?” Dean asked.

Hostetler sighed. “Fellas, every few days, I have to tell a man or a woman something I don’t want to. I’ve... I’ve been practicing medicine for 29 years, and I still don’t know how to do it well.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. “Why don’t you just say it flat out?” Sam suggested.

“All right.” Hostetler took off his reading glasses. “You have a cancer—advanced. Both of you.”

Dean looked down at the floor and sighed.

Hostetler got up and put his book away. “Is that what that fella up in Creede told you?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t believe him.”

“Hell, Doc, it just didn’t make sense that both of us would come down with cancer at the same time. Thought it might have been a curse or something.”

Sam sighed. “We’ve chased enough monsters through mines, Dean. Maybe one of ’em had uranium in it.”

Hostetler came back to his desk. “Do you believe me?”

Dean sighed again. “Can you operate?”

Hostetler shook his head. “I’d have to gut you like a fish.”

“Well, what can you do?”

Hostetler kept shaking his head. “There’s... just, uh... very little I can do. Uh, if... when the pain gets too bad, I can give you something.”

Sam spoke when Dean didn’t seem able to. “What you’re trying to tell us is that we....”

Hostetler nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly.

“Dammit,” the brothers chorused.

“I’m sorry, Sam, Dean.”

Dean got up and started gathering his rifle, cushion, and hat. “You told Sammy he was as strong as an ox.”

“Well, even an ox dies.”

Sam stood and followed Dean’s lead. “How much time do we have?”

Hostetler shrugged a little. “Two months, six weeks, less. There’s no way to tell.”

“What will we be able to do?”

Hostetler stood up and headed toward the office door. “Oh, anything you want at first. Then, later on, you won’t want to.”

Dean frowned. “How much later?”

“You’ll know when.” Hostetler ushered them out of the office and toward the front door of the house. “Now, you’ll have to get off your feet and get some rest. Have you made any kind of arrangements for a room or anything?”

Dean shook his head. “No, Doc, we just got here.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you might try the Widow Braeden. She, she’s got a place down the street here a fair piece. She takes in lodgers. And she’s a nice woman; she could use the help.”

Dean nodded. “We’ll give it a try. Doc, do us a favor. Don’t tell anyone we’re in town.”

“Oh, no. But if I wanted to go unnoticed, I don’t think I’d walk around with this thing,” Hostetler added, pointing to the red velvet cushion with gold tassels that Dean had tucked under his arm. Sam’s looked exactly like it.

Dean leaned in close with a sly grin. “Stole ’em out of a whorehouse in Creede,” he lied. In truth, Darla Elkins had made the cushions for them when they’d mentioned how uncomfortable it was getting to ride anymore.

Hostetler snorted in amusement and said goodbye to both brothers.

“The Widow Braeden,” Sam mused as they positioned their cushions on their saddles and mounted up again. “What are the odds....”

Dean shook his head. “I dunno, Sam. Guess we’d better find out.”

With that, they rode down the street until they came to a big white house at the edge of town with a screened-in wrap-around porch and a sign reading “LODGING” nailed on a tree. The kid who looked like Ben was sweeping the front steps as they rode up.

“Hello,” Dean called. “This the Braeden place?”

The kid looked a little spooked when he looked up at them. “Uh, yeah. Mom?” he called into the house.

Dean got a really weird feeling about the boy. But he didn’t have to cover it; Sam added with a ghost of a smirk, “You can tell your mother that two tuckered-out old men need a room.”

The kid froze briefly, then returned an awkward smile and nodded.

Just then the woman of the house came to the door, and damn if she didn’t look exactly like Lisa, aside from the mauve dress, the tan apron, and the bun. She paused at the top of the steps, looking briefly surprised, but then she covered it with a pleasant, professional smile and came down the steps, drying her hands on a cup towel. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said.

“Afternoon,” Sam replied so Dean didn’t have to. “Doc Hostetler says you can help us.”

Mrs. Braeden smiled a little. “How kind of him. Yes, sir, I have one room available.”

“Good. We’re brothers. That’ll suit us fine.”

Dean nodded his agreement, and they both dismounted and gathered up their guns and cushions.

“Downstairs in the rear,” Mrs. Braeden continued. “Eight dollars by the week, $2 per day if you’re not permanent.”

“Well, we’re not permanent, ma’am,” Sam replied as they began to follow her inside, but then he paused and turned back to the Braeden kid. “Oh, boy, get our gear and saddlebags off of those horses and bring ’em into the house.”

The boy bristled, just like Ben used to, but Mrs. Braeden stated, “Ben will be happy to do that.”

The boy shot his mother an unhappy look but obeyed, and Dean’s heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be—but he’d been a hunter too long to believe in coincidences.

“The parlor is yours to use,” Mrs. Braeden continued as they followed her down the front hall, “and the telephone. My other lodgers have rooms upstairs, two railroad men and a schoolteacher. I’ll introduce them at supper.” She pointed out the kitchen and bathroom as they passed and assured Sam that the mattress on the queen-sized brass bed was clean and soft, and Dean noticed a few subtle wards here and there.

“This is very comfortable,” Dean managed as they surveyed the room, which was really pretty spacious by the standards of the day and had a writing desk that could serve as a table for the two of them. That thought reminded him briefly of their former life in cheap motels, countless greasy burgers eaten on rickety tables or beds. The furnishings were all much nicer than any they’d had growing up, however, and there were even a couple of leather easy chairs by the table.

“Oh, this’ll do fine,” Sam agreed, easing himself down into one of the leather chairs. “We’ll take our meals right here.”

“I serve in the dining room,” Mrs. Braeden stated as she lit the small wood-burning stove in the corner.

“We’ll pay you extra for the trouble.”

“Very well, since you’re not permanent.”

Sam looked down at himself and brushed at his sleeve. “This suit’s got a lot of countryside on it. I’d like to have it brushed before morning—my brother’s, too, if you don’t mind.”

Before Mrs. Braeden could reply, her Ben returned with the bags and gear.

“I’ll take those saddlebags,” said Dean, who was still standing near the door.

“Oh, those bedrolls you can leave outside,” Mrs. Braeden stated. “They won’t be needing them.”

“No, Mrs. Braeden, we have our other things wrapped in them. They’ll need some soap and water.”

Mrs. Braeden nodded.

“Have you a barn?” Sam asked.

“No, we don’t,” Mrs. Braeden replied.

Dean nodded once. “Well, boy, take our horses over to the—”

“My name’s Ben,” the boy interrupted testily. “It’s not ‘boy.’ It’s Ben Braeden, and I don’t like being ordered around.”

Sam and Dean both glanced at Mrs. Braeden, who glanced back at Dean warily.

“Well, that’s fair enough, Benjamin Isaac Braeden,” Dean returned without really thinking, and the boy blanched. “Would you be so kind as to take Impala and ol’ Dollar over to the livery stable and see that they get a double order of oats?”

The boy pulled himself together and nodded. “Okay.” Then he handed the bedrolls and saddlebags to Dean and left.

“You seem to be a man accustomed to giving orders,” Mrs. Braeden observed, almost as if she were testing Dean.

He shrugged and put the gear on the bed. “Well, I guess it is a bad habit of mine. Comes of being a big brother, y’know.”

“I didn’t get your names.”

“We didn’t give ’em. Is it so important?”

“For anyone living under my roof, it is.”

“Well, all right. It’s, uh, Ramone. I’m Joey, and this is Tommy.”

She gasped. “Oh my... _Dean?_ ”

Dean and Sam exchanged a startled glance. “Lisa?” Dean asked quietly.

She glanced at the door, then closed it quickly before throwing herself into Dean’s arms. “Oh, Dean, it’s so good to see you—I hardly recognized you.”

“Lis... _how?!_ ”

“Balthazar thought we’d be out of harm’s way here. We’ve been here a little over five years, waiting.”

He pulled her tighter. “Dammit, I wish I’d known. We’d have come sooner.”

Sam cleared his throat. “Um, I can....”

Lisa pulled back. “No, Sam, stay. We’re, um....”

“Not right now, anyway,” Dean agreed, leading her to a chair before sitting down on the bed. “Lisa, what happened? Bobby never breathed a word.”

She blinked. “Bobby was here?”

“Yeah, showed up, like, eight hours after Cas was supposed to bring us back. But he’s been gone twenty years now.”

“Must have left after we did, then. Balthazar was worried that someone would attack us to try to smoke you out, but he didn’t think Sunrise was safe for us, either.”

“It wouldn’t have been,” the brothers chorused.

“So I broke up with Matt, and Balthazar got us set up here. It’s been an adjustment,” she added with a chuckle, “and there are still a lot of shady characters around, but honestly, it’s been nicer here in terms of community than Battle Creek. I’m a little worried about Ben’s choice of friends and his idolizing of gunfighters, but... he’s done his best to get his hands on every news story and dime-store novel about you two.”

Dean sighed. “Has he forgiven me for not coming back?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s been more focused on seeing you again.”

“He hasn’t quite recognized us yet.”

“Probably not. I don’t think he’d really thought through the changes forty years would make.”

Sam cleared his throat. “Lisa... we should probably just tell you up front. We’ve got advanced cancer. Like, probably Stage IV—inoperable.”

She swallowed hard. “What kind?”

“Based on where Hostetler was examining, I’d guess prostate.”

Lisa cursed quietly. “How long do you have?”

“Two months, tops.”

Dean took her hand. “Lis, we don’t want to cause any trouble for you. Don’t tell anyone we’re here.”

Fighting tears, Lisa nodded. “You wanna... stick with the Ramones or switch to Van Halen?”

Sam snorted. “Last time we were Van Halen, we were undercover at a psych ward.”

“Ramones it is, then.” She stood and strode over to the door, composed herself, and opened it. “I’m glad you’re not staying long, Mr. Ramone,” she said louder, not looking at them. “I’m not sure I like you.”

“Not many do, Mrs. Braeden,” Sam returned.

She turned back with a look that combined amusement, joy, and sorrow all at once, and then she left.

* * *

At the livery stable, Moses Brown, the black stable owner, pulled the saddle off of Impala while Ben puttered around in the office, trying to decide whether or not to snitch a drink of Moses’ whiskey. He did drink every now and again because it seemed like the cool, grown-up thing to do, but the smell of whiskey still reminded him of the summer Dean had spent with them until he’d gotten through his grief well enough to stop drinking quite so much. He knew what alcoholism looked like, and he didn’t want to become like that.

Dean. The shorter of the two old men who’d turned up at the house reminded him an awful lot of Dean—the green eyes, the bowed legs, the voice. The fact that he knew Ben’s full name without being told. And it was 1901, finally. But... but it couldn’t be Dean, not for real. Dean was a hero. Dean could never get _old_.

“Benny,” Moses called suddenly, “fetch me my spectacles.”

Ben located the wire-rimmed glasses on the desk and brought them out to where Moses was peering at the underside of the saddle. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You watch your language, boy,” Moses returned and snatched the glasses from Ben. Then he struck a match and held it up to illuminate the underside of the saddle, which bore the initials DW and three unusual engravings: a devil’s trap, a stylized impala... and a pentangle in a sunburst.

Ben said something his mother would definitely not have approved of.

Moses frowned. “DW? Wait, that don’t mean—”

“Dean Winchester.” Ben looked over at Impala—black and silver, big and gorgeous and strong, just like the car. And Dollar was just about the same color Sam’s hair used to be. He didn’t know whether to be overjoyed that Dean was finally back in their lives or bummed that he was an old man now.

Moses started chuckling, and that tipped the scales in favor of joy. Nobody in Battle Creek would have known the name Dean Winchester or why he and Sam were so awesome.

So Ben started chuckling, too. “The Winchesters are in my house.”

Moses took up a bowlegged stance and made a tough face. “My name is Winchester,” he said in a bad imitation of Dean. “Y’all get that?”

Ben pretended to shoot him multiple times, and Moses pretended to get hit and finally fell over backward into the hay and started laughing his head off.

“They’re in my house!” Ben repeated before running back home. “Mom?” he called as he came in. “Mom, I gotta tell you something.”

Lisa, who was brushing Sam’s suit in her room, shushed him. “Close the door.”

Ben came into the room and closed the door.

“What’s happened?”

He came closer. “Who do you think—”

“Oh, Ben, have you been drinking again?”

“Do you know who they are?!”

“Yes, Joey and Tommy _Ramone_ ,” she replied with a pointed look. “United States Marshals in Lawrence, Kansas. Remember that.”

Ben’s face fell. “But....”

“They’re no safer under their right names now than they were before,” she continued quietly. “And they don’t want anyone to know that they’re here. They can’t stay for more than two months.”

“But, _Mom_....”

“Ben, go to your room. Go on. Go to bed before you wake the house.”

Ben sighed. “Good night, Mom.”

* * *

Somehow, though, one of the upstairs lodgers overheard enough to begin gossiping with the other two over breakfast. So Lisa had to make a show of trying to throw Sam and Dean out before calling the city marshal when they wouldn’t leave. She and Dean had worked out a code the night before that allowed her to alert him to what was going on and to warn him that the marshal was a jerk, and he signaled that he understood and agreed with her plan. Then he set his revolver on top of the newspaper on the table—in plain sight, within reach but not in hand—and settled in with Sam to wait for the marshal.

Marshal Thibido, somewhat predictably, kept up a stern act until he made some comment about fame-seeking hard cases “who’d sell their souls to put your names on the wall” and both brothers snorted loudly. “What’s so funny?” Thibido asked.

“In the first place, Col. Potter,” Dean replied, “we’ve been Hell’s Most Wanted most of our lives. If crossroads deals could take us out, we’d have stayed dead a long time ago.”

“And in the second place,” Sam added, skipping the _Dragnet_ joke that would go with Dean’s equally anachronistic _M*A*S*H_ joke, “crossroads deals have standards, and no crossroads demon in his right mind is going to make a ten-year deal to help some two-bit gunman take out someone who’ll be dead of natural causes in two months.”

Thibido turned his head like he hadn’t quite heard properly. “Huh?”

“You heard me. We’re gonna die right here in this room.”

Thibido scoffed. “That’s too thin.”

“I wish it were,” Dean returned. “Would you believe Doc Hostetler? That’s his verdict.”

Thibido stared in disbelief for a moment, then let out a whoop and started gloating until Dean pulled the newspaper out from under his revolver and told him to scat in a growl that sounded rather too much like Bobby for comfort. Sam also made Thibido promise not to tell anyone they were dying, even if he couldn’t keep a lid on the news that the Winchesters were in town.

No sooner had Thibido left, however, than Dean sensed someone hanging around the open window to the porch. With Sam covering and his gun in his left hand, he reached out and flipped Ben through the window and onto the floor. It felt effortless—until he tried to stand and found himself out of breath.

“Dean?” Sam asked, concerned.

But Dean was focused on the boy he’d once thought might be his son. “You little sneak,” he growled breathlessly as he sank down on the bed. “How long were you out there?”

“I was just passing by,” Ben said, looking up at him in concern.

“You spy on us, and I’ll nail your slats to a tree.” Dean looked pointedly at the outside window to show Ben that he needed to keep up the act of their being strangers.

“Oh, no, sir. I’d never—”

“Oh, you’ve already told your mother. Who else have you blabbed to?”

Ben picked himself up. “Uh, Jay Cobb. Are you all right, D—Mr. Winchester?”

“We can’t abide skulkers,” Sam said as he came over to put a supporting hand on Dean’s back. “You want to see us, knock on our door like a man.”

Ben nodded and headed for said door. “I will. You sure you’re all right? If there’s anything I can do for you, you just let me know, sirs, because it’s an honor to have you in this house.”

“I’m afraid your mother doesn’t agree.”

“She doesn’t know how a man feels.”

Dean snorted quietly. “Idjit.”

Ben caught that and spared him a worried glance but kept babbling to Sam like a fanboy. “You’re the most famous people to ever come into this town, and when I was a boy and we first moved here, I heard all about your shootout at the Acme Saloon. I just never thought I’d get the chance to meet you.”

“There’s more to bein’ a man than handlin’ a gun,” Dean said louder and handed his revolver to Sam, who took it with his own back to their holsters in the gun belts hanging near the door. “Don’t you have something to do? Haven’t you got a job?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Ben fumbled behind him for the doorknob. “I was just headed over to Cobb’s Creamery right now. I help Jay with deliveries sometimes,” he continued as Sam herded him out the door.

“That was the nice gentleman you were with yesterday?” Sam asked.

“Well, yeah, he’s....”

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s in the kitchen, I think. Well, goodbye, sir. It was real nice meeting you.”

“Goodbye.”

Dean had caught his breath by then, and he and Sam converged on the kitchen, where Lisa was grinding flour into a bowl with a large wall-mounted mill. “It’s okay,” she said quietly as they came in and she walked over to the counter where several lumps of bread dough were awaiting their second kneading. “The others are out.”

“Had to put the fear of Sam into Ben, Lis,” Dean confessed. “I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry we can’t keep this under wraps. I really can’t afford to lose the other lodgers before May, though. Not that I’m really asking you to leave.”

“We couldn’t even if we wanted to,” Sam noted. “But Thibido was right about one thing—there’s a good chance something’s gonna come after us here.”

Dean swore. “I don’t want us to be a burden, Lis. We can look after each other; you just bring us our meals, keep pretending like you don’t know us when the others are around. We can pay $4 a day for the room....”

Lisa laughed, the kind of laugh that meant she was fighting off tears. “Dammit, Dean, do you think I’d be charging you at all if I had another source of income?” And to keep him from arguing further, she walked outside.

Sam sighed and nudged Dean. “C’mon. Let’s check the wards.”

With a last sad glance after Lisa, Dean followed Sam out of the kitchen.


	3. Chapter 2: Vultures Circling

_Mssrs. Dean and Sam Winchester, said to be of Lawrence, Kansas, have returned to Carson City after a 15-year absence and are staying at the house of Mrs. Lisa Braeden. This reporter trusts that they are enjoying the salubrious winter climate of our fair city and are pleased with the modern amenities present even here. Carson City is the jewel of the Nevada frontier, and Mrs. Braeden’s house is a jewel in its own right, so the Winchesters should find it most comfortable and restful, which surely even the most hardened of shootists must need after so many years in the wild country._

 _—item from the_ Carson City Morning Appeal _, January 19, 1901, written by Dan Dobkins_

A reporter by the name of Dobkins turned up at Lisa’s house the next morning. Sam had volunteered to go talk to Hostetler about medication and bills, which left Dean to deal with the reporter. He found the vain younger man examining his hair in the parlor mirror, and after an awkward introduction, Dean invited him to sit down.

Dobkins sat down and mentioned that the newspaper had run an article on the brothers’ presence in town that morning. “Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s Page 1, I assure you.”

“We’ve had Mrs. Braeden bring us a copy of your paper the last couple of days. Old habit. Just haven’t gotten today’s yet.”

“Oh.”

“Well, what can I do for you?”

“Well, sir, that’s what I came to talk to you about.”

“Well, that’s what I figured.” Dean wondered idly how many times they could start a sentence with ‘well’ before Dobkins noticed.

“Yes. You must appreciate, sir, that you and your brother are the most celebrated shootists extant.”

“Extant?”

“Uh, still existing. Alive.”

Sam should have taken this interview. “Thank you.”

“Yes, and your reputation is nationwide. My story went out over the wires this morning, and every daily of consequence will run it, but they’ll want more. The papers in the East, in particular. Between us, Mr. Winchester, we can really put Carson City on the map.”

Well, since Sam wasn’t here, Dean would have to try to throw Dobkins for a loop with some Shakespeare. “More matter and less art.”

It didn’t quite work. “Yes, sir. Well, sir, I would like tremendously to do a series of stories on you and your brother.”

Dean frowned. “A series?”

“Yes. How long will you be with us?”

“Not as long as we’d like to be.”

“Oh. Well, we could start today, right now, and then get together again tomorrow. You see, there’s been so much cheap fiction about gunmen. I want to get down to the true story for once, while you’re still available, before anything happens to you.” Dean frowned, and Dobkins faltered. “I... I mean, uh... I hope nothing does....”

“Go on,” Dean rumbled.

“Yes. I wanna cover your career factually. The statistics, you might say. Then I’d delve into the psychological aspects—what turned you to violence in the first place? Are you by nature bloodthirsty?” Dean made a face at that, but Dobkins didn’t notice, his eyes closing as he kept pondering aloud. “Uh, do you, uh, brood after the deed is done, or have you lived so long with death that you’re used to it? The death of others? The prospect of your own?”

It had been forty-two years since someone last dared to psychoanalyze Dean to his face, and he still occasionally had nightmares about that hunt, the wraith poison that had pushed both brothers so close to the edge of sanity. He was not going to let this sissified idiot get anywhere near the question of whether or not he and Sam were dangerously codependent or anything else equally cockeyed that came nowhere near the whole messed-up truth. And he was damn sure not going to let Dobkins anywhere near Sam; the last thing Sammy needed now was to scratch the Wall and send himself into a seizure that could kill him faster than the cancer would.

Dobkins wanted musings about death-dealing? Dean had _been_ Death for a day. He’d give this twit something to chew over—and choke on.

He got up, cocked his revolver, and stuck it in Dobkins’ face. When Dobkins opened his eyes and stared at him open-mouthed, he shoved the end of the barrel into the reporter’s mouth, who semi-instinctively closed his lips around it. “The Chicago-style pizza I once shared with Death probably tasted better,” Dean said, “and I know the bacon hot dogs did, but you’ll have to make do with gunmetal. One fit or fidget, and Mrs. Braeden is going to be scrubbing your brains off the wallpaper. On your feet.”

Dobkins made a scared noise and complied.

“Back up.”

Dobkins did so, and Dean kept his gun in Dobkins’ mouth as he backed Dobkins into the front hall.

Unfortunately, Lisa happened to come downstairs at that moment. “Mr. Winchester! What in heaven’s name are you doing?”

“Ma’am,” said Dean, “we have a touchy situation here. Out,” he ordered Dobkins.

Dobkins squeaked and backed toward the door.

Once they were out on the porch, Dean took his gun out of Dobkins’ mouth and ordered him to turn around and bend over. When Dobkins did so, Dean stated, “Dobkins, you are a prying pipsqueak, and if you ever come dandying around here again”—this he punctuated by kicking Dobkins down the stairs—“I know a Reaper I could introduce you to.”

Dobkins picked himself up and ran off without so much as a glance behind him.

“That was a savage thing to do,” Lisa scolded.

Winded, Dean slumped against the porch door’s frame. “Maybe.”

Lisa hurried up to him. “Dean?”

Dean pushed off the doorframe and tried to head inside on his own steam, but Lisa quickly caught up to him and supported him all the way back to the room.

* * *

Meanwhile, Sam had ridden the streetcar into town and was settling into Hostetler’s office. “First things first, Doc,” he said. “We almost forgot to ask you. How much do we owe you?”

Hostetler grinned. “You’re a man after my own heart, Winchester. Most of ’em ask that last, if at all.” Then he dug in a cabinet and pulled out two large, flat bottles of dark liquid—about the same size and shape as the bottles they’d used for the phoenix ash all those years ago. “Well, let’s see... we’ll make it $4 for the two visits, $2 for today, plus $2 for that.” And he handed the bottles to Sam.

Sam handed him $8 and looked at the bottles. “What’s that?”

“They call that laudanum, a solution of opium and alcohol.”

Sam didn’t want to think about whether any of the pills Dean had occasionally taken when he first got back from Hell had been opiates or whether they’d been more than occasional. At least with both of them on this stuff, they should be able to keep the nightmares to a minimum. And maybe he wouldn’t give in to the temptation to scratch the Wall—it had held admirably the entire time they’d been here, but it still itched, and he really didn’t want Dean to be on his case about that, of all problems, here at the end of the road.

“How does it taste?” he asked, studying the liquid.

Hostetler shook his head. “Just, just awful. Terrible. But it’s the most potent painkiller we’ve got.”

And probably mixed in the right proportion to prevent either of them from pulling a Jimi Hendrix if they overdosed... not that it mattered, but they wouldn’t want to do that to Lisa. Sam nodded. “How much of it do we take?”

“Well, as much as you need, when you need it. I think a spoonful would be all right to start with.”

“Later?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, but I think one morning you’re just going to wake up and say, ‘Here I am in this bed, and here I’m gonna stay.’”

Sam leaned forward. “Hostetler, I wanna know. For Dean’s sake.”

“Well, unless you insist, I’d rather not talk about it.”

“We’ve been through Hell, Doc, both of us. It can’t be worse than that. I want to know.”

Hostetler shifted uncomfortably. “All right. There’ll be an increase in the severity of the pain in your lower spine, your hips, your groin. You... d’y—d’y—do you want me to go on?” Sam nodded tightly, and he sighed. “The pain will become unbearable. No drug will moderate it. If you’re lucky, you’ll lose consciousness, and until then, you’ll scream.”

The mental image of Dean dissolving into hallucinations of Alastair ripping his guts out suddenly jumped to the front of Sam’s mind. Disturbed, he pushed himself to his feet, panting a little from the effort.

Hostetler jumped up and gently took Sam’s elbow to steer him to the door. “I-I—I’m sorry. I-I-I didn’t mean to be specific like this. Now, the next time I’ll come to Mrs. Braeden’s. You just telephone. You just telephone,” he repeated, handing Sam his hat. Sam started to open the door, and Hostetler continued, “There’s... there’s one more thing I’d say.”

Sam paused. “Yeah, Doc?”

“The three of us have had a lot to do with death. I’m not a brave man, but you two must be.” Sam scoffed, but Hostetler went on. “Now-now-now—this is not advice. It’s not even a suggestion. It’s just something for you and your brother to reflect on while your minds are still clear.”

“What?”

“I would not die a death like I just described.”

“No?”

Hostetler shook his head. “Not if I had your courage.”

“Oh.” Sam nodded. “Thanks.” And he left.

Suicide and fratricide were both out of the question, Sam decided as he tucked the bottles of laudanum into his jacket. Neither of them was willing to risk Hell again. But he had to be honest... those weren’t the only options.

He and Dean had been discussing the Dobkins situation and Hostetler’s non-advice and each taken a swig of laudanum straight from the bottle when Lisa knocked. Dean called for her to come in.

“Hey,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“We were talking about Queen Victoria,” Dean replied—not quite truthfully, but Sam could see where Dean was headed with the idea. “She’ll die here in a couple of days. Maybe she’s outlived her time; maybe she’s a museum piece. But she’ll never lose her dignity. She’ll hang onto her pride and go out in style.”

Sam suddenly thought of Ellen and Jo and Pamela and had to look away so he wouldn’t cry.

Lisa sighed. “Listen, I came in to see what you can eat, if you can have what I’m serving tonight.”

“No, you didn’t. And you know I can always eat your cooking, Lis.”

“I wish you’d stop contradicting me.”

“And I wish you’d say what you mean,” Sam interjected.

“Sam....”

“Sorry, Lisa. Forget I said anything.”

“You know I’ll do whatever I can for both of you.”

“Thank you. All our lives we’ve been too proud to accept much help from outsiders—even from each other, sometimes. Guess we’ll have to learn.”

Dean nodded thoughtfully.

Sam pulled out one of the wooden chairs. “Would you sit down for a moment? Please do.”

Lisa did so just as Dean pulled the stopper out of his bottle of laudanum. “What’s that?”

“The good stuff,” Dean replied wearily and took another swig, then grimaced at the taste and put the stopper back. “Laudanum.”

“That’s addictive, isn’t it?”

Dean shot her a look, and she grimaced in apology.

Sam leaned forward. “Lisa, I think it’d do Dean a world of good to go for a drive in the country tomorrow. Would you go with him?”

Dean looked startled, but then he looked at Lisa hopefully.

Lisa shook her head. “Oh, I—I couldn’t, but thank you.”

“I wish you’d reconsider,” Dean said; evidently the laudanum was making him a little less hesitant about showing Lisa that he’d never really gotten over her (and the less said about the Amazons, the better). “It’d only be for an hour or two.”

She got up and started to leave. “No. I appreciate the invitation, but no.”

“Is it that you don’t want to be alone with me now?”

She turned back. “Oh, no. It’s just that it might not jibe with my being a ‘widow’—people would....”

Dean scoffed. “People! If I have to work on your sympathy, I will. You know what our life’s been like—I can’t take one last road trip like I want to, but I want to get out and see the trees and the lakes, the hills and the sky. And I don’t fancy seeing it alone.”

“You could go with Sam.”

“There’ll be time for that later in the day. But we’ve been in each other’s pockets for close to 70 years. I want to go with _you_.” He paused. “There’s never been anyone else since I left. Not really.”

She smiled. “Okay, Dean. I’ll go with you.”

Dean grinned. “Good. Tomorrow at 10?”

She nodded.

“Well, will you get ‘Please, Mr. Ben Braeden’ to trot down to the stable and get us the best horse and buggy they have?”

She chuckled. “I will.”

“I appreciate it, Lis.”

Their smiles grew, and as Lisa left, Sam settled back in his chair, satisfied that he’d given his brother one last chance at that taste of happiness and normalcy Dean would never admit he’d always craved.

* * *

That night, a lone gambler left the New Hotel Carson and made his way across the street to the Metropole, a gambling parlor and saloon. He edged past the throngs of men drinking and gambling until he got to the faro table at the far end of the long room, where stood a dealer with an Irish accent and preternatural good luck. The dealer was known in town as Jack Pulford, but unbeknownst to even the man himself, the Winchesters had met him in 2009 under his right name, Patrick. His faro game wasn’t the perilous magic that his poker usually was, but he did enjoy taking as much money as he could from the sore losers who could be provoked into allowing him to build his reputation as a gunman rather than as a witch.

“Pulford,” said his informant. “Sam and Dean Winchester over at Mrs. Braeden’s.”

“That was yesterday’s news,” Patrick replied.

“Yeah, but I just heard they’re dyin’.”

“Dying?”

“Friend of mine got it from Marshal Thibido himself. The Winchesters are cashing in.”

“That’s hard news,” Patrick mused. “They were men I could have taken.”

The sore loser Patrick had been needling scoffed.

Patrick looked at him coldly. “You have two ways of leaving this establishment, my friend: immediately or dead.”

The sore loser left the table and started to leave the saloon, but then he came back in with his gun drawn and started shooting from the door. Patrick calmly pulled his own pistol and fired one shot, hitting the man through the heart although he was over 80 feet away. The other patrons cheered.

Patrick smirked a little as he holstered his gun. Foolish bloodthirsty Americans... as bad as the Romans, some of them. But no one needed to know that his gun was charmed never to miss a human target. Let them all think it was skill or simply the fabled luck of the Irish.

* * *

While Dean and Lisa were out driving the next morning, Sam went to the library and the newspaper office to do some research. He saved his findings for the drive he took with Dean that afternoon.

Dean began the conversation, however. “Ran into Mike Sweeney, Albert’s brother, on the way back,” he said as soon as they were out of town.

“Albert Sweeney—the _dragon_?”

“Yup.”

Sam sighed. “Well, that’s great. Jay Cobb’s a werewolf, and you’ll never guess who the faro dealer at the Metropole is.”

“Who?”

“Patrick, the Irish witch.”

“No kidding. Huh. If I didn’t know better, I’d suggest we try gettin’ him into a poker game.”

Sam snorted. “Won’t surprise me if we start seeing more monsters drifting into town. If word gets out that we’re going down....”

Dean sighed. “Yeah. I know.”

They drove in silence for a while before Sam finally asked, “Is that what you want?”

“Hell, Sam, I don’t know. We’ve done this dance before.”

“But not with cancer.”

“I know.” Dean looked at Sam. “Is it what you want?”

“I want not to go back to Hell.”

They looked at each other for a long moment before they drove on, Dean humming Metallica under his breath.

Neither of them could sleep well that night, however, and about the time Dean gave up and grabbed the laudanum, Sam sensed something outside the window. The room was pretty well warded, salt under the windows, and it was the new moon; but that didn’t preclude intruders of a more human sort. After a brief exchange of hand signals, Dean grabbed the Colt and Sam grabbed the knife; then they arranged the pillows under the covers to look like they were still in bed and hid in opposite corners of the room.

Sure enough, a humanoid silhouette blotted what little ambient outdoor light there was at each window briefly. Then one window broke, and a gun barrel poked through the curtains. Dean fired, and the assailant, lit up with blue fire from the inside, crashed through the window and onto the floor. Seconds later the other window broke, scattering the salt line, and a second gunman shot at the bed before stepping through. Sam threw his knife, and the demoniac gunman sparked and fell, though not before letting off a stray shot that hit the kerosene lamp beside the bed. Sam rushed to put out the fire with water from the washbasin while Dean retrieved the knife; when the fire was out, both brothers sank down to sit back to back at the foot of the bed.

“Dean! Sam!” Ben called from the hall. When they didn’t reply, Ben carefully opened the bedroom door and surveyed the scene. “Dean? Are you hurt?”

“No,” Dean replied. “But they are. Call the marshal.”

“What... um....”

“Dunno what that one was,” Sam reported, nodding to the assailant Dean had shot and wheezing a little. “Other was a demon.”

Ben swallowed hard and ran off to call the marshal. When he’d done that, though, he went to the kitchen, where Lisa was preparing to make coffee. “They got both of ’em,” he reported breathlessly. “They musta come in through the window, guns blazing ’cause they knew Sam and Dean would have salt lines....”

“Close your robe,” Lisa scolded.

“... but they’re so damn fast, they killed ’em both. The Winchester Brothers in a hunt-slash-shootout right here.” Then he excitedly used one of Dean’s favorite profanities.

“Ben!”

“Mom, I’m sorry, but this is a great day. Our house is a part of history now. You’ve gotta know that.”

“That’s nothing to be proud of. Our house in Cicero was part of history, if anybody’d cared about the world not ending.”

But he didn’t heed; he hugged her happily. “I love Dean! And Sam, too!”

She sighed and took him by the shoulders. “Ben, it’s time you knew. They’re dying.”

Ben sobered. “Who?”

“Sam and Dean.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“They both have prostate cancer. And it’s advanced enough that even if we got them home, it couldn’t be cured.”

“You’re lying. Dean would have told me.”

“He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want you to worry. You know how he is. He didn’t even tell me; Sam did.” She turned away to hide the tears she was fighting. “He’s dying, Ben. He’s dying, and Balthazar never warned us.” And finally she broke down.

Ben pulled her into a hug, but he was too stunned to let his own tears fall.

* * *

_Mrs. Lisa Braeden received some unwelcome callers late last night when Mr. Ben Shoup and Mr. Alec Norton, no fixed abode, sought to surprise the Winchester brothers in their room. Our famous guests ensured that neither Mr. Shoup nor Mr. Norton shall attempt such a surprise ever again. Let no one think that age or illness has slowed the Winchesters since their appearance at the Acme Saloon!_

_—item from the_ Carson City Morning Appeal _, January 21, 1901, written by Dan Dobkins_

The other lodgers moved out first thing in the morning. Thibido identified the two assailants as individuals neither brother had ever heard of, “no-goods not from around here.” Sam had sneaked a look at the first assailant’s corpse, however; he’d been a wraith.

Thibido promised to post a man outside at night, and Lisa thanked him, but Dean snorted. “Lotta good that’ll do against monsters. There’s no need of anyone else getting killed on our account.”

Sam sighed. “Mrs. Braeden, we can’t tell you how sorry we are about last night.”

“That doesn’t help,” she replied and took the damaged bedding outside to the wash house.

Thibido started needling Dean and suggesting that he bring Patrick over to speed up the dying process. Then he turned to Sam and started carrying on about how the world had changed but the brothers hadn’t changed with it. “To put it in a nutshell, you’ve plain plumb outlived your time.”

“To put it in a nutshell?!” Dean retorted as Sam reached into his vest pocket. “You couldn’t put it in the TARDIS.”

Sam pulled out his old Blackberry. “Ever seen one of these, Marshal?”

Thibido blinked. “No. What is it?”

“A telephone. A Blackberry, to be precise—has a personal digital assistant, email and Internet access, MP3 player, games, instant messenger, the works. Holds more information than the Carson City Public Library. First came on the market when I was a sophomore at Stanford University.”

Thibido scoffed. “Stanford’s barely been open for ten years.”

“I know that. It was 110 when I started the pre-law program.”

Dean leaned forward. “We’ve seen buildings destroyed that you’ll never live to see built. We’ve driven horseless carriages that make Mike Sweeney’s Oldsmobile look like a Tinker Toy. The tools we used every day before we got stranded in Sunrise would have blown your mind. You want to talk about outliving our time, Marshal? We outlived the damn _Apocalypse._ ”

Thibido scoffed again. “You’re cracked and ornery, the both of you. When my time comes to die, I won’t drag it out. I’ll just do it. Why the hell don’t you?”

“We’ve died more times than you can count,” Sam growled. “This time we’ll do it on our own schedule, not Hell’s.”

Dean drew his revolver and aimed it at Thibido.

The marshal backed up a bit but stopped. “I don’t scare anymore.”

“Neither did those other idjits,” Dean replied.

“You wouldn’t gun down a police officer.”

“What’d stop me, fear of dying?”

Thibido looked at them both scornfully and left.

* * *

Later, Sam took the streetcar over to the livery stable and arrived to find Moses (who sounded an awful lot like Scatman Crothers) brushing Dollar while singing a takeoff on “John Brown’s Body” featuring Sam’s name and the punchline “But his horse keeps gallopin’ on!”

Amused, Sam called, “Moses, would you care to do business with a voice from the grave?”

Moses startled, but seeing Sam smile, he burst into smiles himself and grandiosely ushered Sam into his office. Then he counted out five twenty-dollar bills and handed them to Sam.

“What’s this for?”

“What’s it for? For your horse!”

“My horse?! I want to sell my horse, but this wouldn’t buy my saddle.”

“Aw, but Mr. Winchester, you done agreed.”

“When?”

“When you sent Benny—I mean, when Mr. Braeden said this morning that $100 would be just fine with you.”

Sam grimaced; he had sent no such message with Ben, and neither had Dean. “I’ll have to have a talk with Mr. Braeden. As far as Dollar goes, it’s three.”

Moses stared. “Three hundred?!”

“Three hundred.” Sam knew he was insisting on the equivalent of what Impala might sell for in the 21st century if she were still a car, but he had a good reason for doing so.

Moses shook his head a little. “I might maybe can go $200.”

“You might maybe go more than that, because you’ll get more than that because he’s mine. And if you have any ideas about Impala, forget it. She’s a unique horse, and you couldn’t afford her even if Dean were willing to sell. He’s giving her to Ben—but don’t tell Ben that.”

“I won’t. But—”

“Three.”

Moses sighed. “Two fifty.”

“Three, and I’ll throw the saddle in for cash.”

“Well, what about my bill?”

“You throw that in.”

“Aw, Mr. Winchester, I ain’t made of money.”

“Moses, are we gonna stand around here and haggle all day?”

Moses started laughing. “Mr. Winchester, you’re the most famous man I ever seen and the _second_ -best haggler.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at that. “Who’s the best?”

“Here I stand,” Moses said proudly.

Sam liked this guy, he really did, and he wanted to cut him a deal, but he needed to get the best price possible to have a decent amount to leave to Lisa. So he smiled and said, “Well, let’s get to haggling.”

“Let’s get to hagglin’,” Moses agreed and eagerly counted out enough bills to bring the total to $295.

“No.”

Moses’ smile faltered. “Ninety-six?” he asked, adding a dollar to the pile.

“No.”

“Ninety-seven?”

Sam just smiled.

“Ninety-eight?”

“Sold.”

Moses spluttered for a moment in delighted disbelief before crowing, “Mr. Winchester, that makes me the best haggler!”

“The best in the world, Moses,” Sam agreed with a grin.

But his good mood was gone by the time he got back to Lisa’s house and filled Dean in. Dean promptly burst through the back porch door yelling for Ben. “Where’s Ben?” he asked as Lisa came out of the wash house.

“In the woodshed,” Lisa replied.

“That’s appropriate.”

“Why?”

“You stay out of this.” Dean stormed into the woodshed and found Ben. “You want to explain?” he demanded.

Ben blinked. “Huh?”

Dean handed him the bill of sale for Dollar. “You were trying to cheat Sam, and Moses was trying to cheat you.”

Ben looked over the bill of sale. “I’m sorry.”

Dean snatched it back. “Well, I’m glad of that, but it doesn’t—” He broke off as a flare of pain in his abdomen made him double over and stumble back to sit down. “It doesn’t tell me very much,” he continued once he was seated and could speak again.

Ben sighed. “She cried on my shoulder this morning because of what happened. And then the lodgers moved out. Your room is a mess. And now she’s worried about losing the house ’cause Balthazar took out a loan before he built it for us. Well, I just thought that maybe you might want to do something to try and make it up to her. I know you’d never part with Impala, but I thought Sam might be interested in selling his horse since you’re...” He stopped.

“Since we’re what?”

“You’re dying.”

Dean grimaced. “How’d you find that out?”

“Mom told me. Guess I’m the last one in town to know about it.”

“Ben, don’t you think you should have talked to Sam before you tried to sell his horse?”

Ben nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so. But I just wanted to see first if Moses would buy it, that’s all. I’m not a horse thief.”

Dean huffed. “Son, I know you better than that. I’ve been operating on the raw edge lately, but I never thought you were trying to steal Dollar. Guess I just jumped too far, too fast. And I hope I can hang around long enough to make it up to you.”

Ben bit his lip. “Dean, do you think... would you give me a shooting lesson?”

Dean started to refuse, but Ben wasn’t a kid anymore, and in a town like this, he might need to know how to handle a gun even if he wasn’t hunting. So he agreed, and they had a pleasant chat about gun safety, the dangers of facing amateurs in gunfights, and the importance of being willing to pull the trigger when split seconds counted. He also gave Ben some caution about trusting Cobb and the advice Cobb had relayed from Bat Masterson, as well as about mixing alcohol with guns.

* * *

The final straw came that night, however. Dean was in the kitchen with Lisa; Ben had gone to bed; and Sam was in the brothers’ room building the fire when he heard a quiet knock and a woman’s voice asking, “Sam?”

Sam would have known that voice anywhere. “Yes?”

“May I come in?” When he didn’t answer, the door opened and a petite blonde came in hesitantly. “Don’t... don’t you remember me?”

“Serepta?” he replied with a smile.

She nodded and ran to him. He’d fallen for her in the ’70s, but she had run off with someone else just before he’d planned to propose. Dean never had liked her, but he’d consoled Sam at the time by pointing out that at least she hadn’t ended up like Jess or Madison.

He held her close now, happy to see her alive and whole. “Sera, I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re here.”

“I came the minute I heard.”

They sat down and chatted for a moment, catching up on times and loves past and holding each other. Then Serepta brought up the question of getting married now; her own husband had left her. Sam confessed that he didn’t see the point.

“I’d have your name.”

“How far would that take you?”

“Long ways, maybe.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “Sam, you’re too modest, y’know. Everybody knows who you are. I’d be Mrs. Sam Winchester; I’d be somebody.”

He chuckled. “That wouldn’t buy you any bacon.”

“Well, it might.” At his confused look, she explained that she’d been contacted by a reporter who wanted to write a book on the brothers using her name. “He said, in the East, that it would sell like hotcakes and he’d split it with me.”

The longer she went on, the more disgusted he was. “And his name is Dobkins.”

“That’s right. How’d you know that?”

“Because Dean kicked him out of here a few days ago for the same reason.”

“Sam, what harm is there in a marriage certificate, a piece of paper?”

“I don’t object to that. It’s the book. We’ve had better books written about our lives, though they’ll never be published now—and the author of those wasn’t any great talent. Dobkins is no prophet. What does _he_ know about my life or Dean’s? As a matter of fact, what do you know?”

“He says what he doesn’t know, he’ll make up, and you know, gory things, shoot-’em-ups and midnight rides and women tearing out their hair. Sam, it will be a corker, I promise you.”

“And when I was six months old, our mother burned on the ceiling of my nursery with her stomach sliced open because she interrupted a demon who was placing a spell on me with his blood, a spell intended to make me the one true vessel of Lucifer.”

She frowned. “Why would he say that? That’s crazy. Nobody would believe it.”

“But it’s the truth. Sera, I still have _some_ pride. A man should be allowed his human dignity.” And he took a swig of laudanum, trying not to be disturbed by the fact that he’d gotten used to the taste already.

Serepta turned away, shaking in disappointment. “I spent $3 on the train here, one way.”

“You and Dobkins are two sides of a counterfeit coin. I’ll pay you back. I’ll pay you both ways.” He pulled his wallet out of his jacket and retrieved $6.

“What’s wrong about a book?”

“I’ll not be remembered for a pack of lies.”

She snatched the money out of his hand and started a stream of tearful invective that made Sam remember _why_ Dean hadn’t liked her. Then she stormed out.

Sam had just slumped back in the leather chair that had become his by default when Dean came in. “Was that _Becky?!_ ”

“Serepta.”

“Same difference—crazy-eyed Sam-girls. What’d she want?”

“My name to put on the cover of the book Dobkins is going to write whether we want him to or not. Chuck was one thing; he couldn’t help it. This Dobkins cat is something else.”

Dean swore and sank down on the bed. “Sammy, we gotta do something.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah. We do.”


	4. Chapter 3: Go Down Gambling

**THE QUEEN IS DEAD  
―  
LONG LIVE THE KING**

_—front page headline of the Carson City Morning Appeal, special mid-day edition, January 22, 1901_

Tuesday the 22nd dawned bright and clear, and with their spirits bolstered by laudanum and their plan and the fact that they had the house to themselves, Sam and Dean came to breakfast singing Aerosmith at the tops of their lungs and very slightly off key. Lisa laughed at them, and Dean kissed her.

“Hey, Lisa, any chance of getting our Fed suits cleaned by Thursday?” Sam asked. “They’re gettin’ pretty gross, after nine days on the back of a saddle in a bedroll.”

Lisa shrugged. “Sure. The local place even does dry cleaning now, and they advertise next-day service.”

Dean grinned. “Awesome.” And he kissed her again.

She pushed at his shoulder. “Oh, Dean, sit down and eat your breakfast. Ham and eggs?”

“Biscuits,” the brothers chorused with identical grimaces and stomach rubs.

Lisa nodded and brought the biscuits and jelly to the table. “Hey, what did Ben do yesterday that made you so mad at him?”

“Isn’t what he did,” Dean replied. “It’s what he didn’t do. But we got that straightened out. He’s a good kid. Still wish he was my son. He has the making of something special.”

“I hope so.” Lisa took a drink of coffee and sighed. “I, um... if you want, I can have Rev. Saunders come over tomorrow. I mean, I know that’s not your thing, but... since it’s cancer this time... maybe it’ll make things easier for you.”

“No, thanks,” Sam said. “We’ve made our peace.”

Dean added, “Lisa, we’re tired of people pawing over our death for this reason or that or for any reason. A man’s death is about the most private thing in his life—we should know; we’ve done it before, separately and together. This one doesn’t belong to Dobkins or Rev. Saunders or Thibido. It’s ours.”

“And none of those people know a damn thing about us—I mean, you know Dean pretty well, but to everyone else in this town, we’re just gunslingers. They look down on us for making judgments with a gun barrel poked in our face, but it’s all right for them to judge us on hearsay. We’ve been to Hell; we’ve done our time. And we’re better than they’ve already decided we are, demon blood or not.”

Lisa huffed. “All right, then. I was just offering.”

The meal didn’t last too long after that.

On the way to take their suits to the cleaners, the brothers debated stopping at the barber shop for a haircut but decided to do it themselves so they could salt and burn the clippings afterward. The man at the cleaners agreed to let Lisa or Ben pick up the suits the next day, and the lawyer in town was reluctantly willing to help them draw up power-of-attorney forms to give Lisa full control of their estate (such as it was). Then, after a couple of other errands, Dean decided to stop at the livery stable to talk with Moses and see Impala one last time before they headed back to Lisa’s. The car-turned-horse seemed to know what was happening and nuzzled Dean’s hand and shoulder sadly as he petted her.

“Look after Ben, will you, baby?” he whispered.

She whickered and nodded.

When Dean finally tore himself away and waved goodbye to Moses, however, Sam was standing at the stable door watching someone warily.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Undertaker. He spotted me.”

Dean swore quietly. “You know what he wants.”

“Likely.”

“Probably won’t respect Lisa’s power of attorney.”

“Guess we should tell him straight.”

Dean sighed. “Guess so.”

So they waited until the undertaker, a ghoulish-looking older man who probably wasn’t actually a ghoul, approached and introduced himself as Hezekiah Beckum. “I hope you gentlemen don’t think my stopping by is untimely,” he added.

Sam shrugged. “No, we admire a man with get-up-and-go.”

“As the saying goes in our profession, the early worm catches the bird.”

Both brothers rolled their eyes.

“I, uh, admit to having heard some unfortunate things. I’d like to express my heartfelt regret.”

“All right,” Dean said, “what’s your proposition?”

Beckum rattled off a long list of fine frippery he wanted to provide, stuff like embalming and a fancy casket that no self-respecting hunter would accept, famous gunslinger or not.

Dean let him finish before asking, “For how much?”

“Why, nothing, sir. For the privilege.”

“No, I mean, how much are you gonna make on the deal?”

Beckum feigned outrage. “Sir!”

“Oh, Beckum, you’re gonna do to us what they did to John Wesley Hardin. You’re gonna lay us out, let the public come by and gawp at us for 50¢ a head, 10¢ for the children. When the curiosity peters out, you’re gonna put us in gunny sacks and stick us in a hole while you hurry to the bank with your loot.”

“Mr. Winchester, I assure you—”

“Save it, Beckum,” Sam interrupted, pulling his notepad out of his vest. “What good’s your assurance when our veins are full of your juice and some witch decides to pull us out of the hereafter to have her dirty deeds done dirt cheap, stuff we’d have killed her for when we were alive?”

Dean looked slightly impressed at the reference.

“No,” Sam continued, writing as he talked, “here’s what you’re going to do. First, you’re going to give us $50 cash—each.” Beckum looked shocked, but Sam ignored it. “Then early Thursday morning, you’re going to bring us a headstone. We want a small headstone, plain granite, with this written on it.” He handed Beckum the paper he’d written on. “Nothing else. No epitaph, no angels— _especially_ no angels. You got that?”

“Mr. Winchester, you’re a hard man.”

“I’m not finished. You _will not_ embalm us or take so much as one hair from our heads. You have _one day_ to display our bodies, and you’ll make sure no one touches them to take souvenirs of any kind. You can still break even easily in that time, in a town this size. After that, you deliver them to Lisa Braeden to be cremated according to our wishes. She has durable power of attorney.”

“And if you don’t respect it?” Dean added. “ _You_ will be the first man we haunt.”

Beckum sighed. “Ah, very well. I’ll set my stonecutter to work on the inscription immediately.” He folded up the paper and tucked it into his pocket, then turned to go.

“Mr. Beckum.”

Beckum stopped.

“The $100.”

Beckum nodded, got out a wad of cash, and handed each brother $50.

Dean nodded once. “Thank you, sir.”

As soon as Beckum was out of earshot, Sam snorted. “Early worm. Dude, even _you_ don’t make jokes that bad.”

Dean huffed a laugh, and they went to catch the streetcar.

* * *

That night, they called Ben into their room and gave him a list of six individuals—mostly monsters, plus Patrick—to contact. “Tomorrow morning early,” Dean told him, “we want you to go to each one of them and tell them that we’ll be at the Metropole Thursday morning at 11:00. And don’t tell any of ’em that you’ve told the others.”

Ben blinked. “But Thursday’s your birthday.”

Dean nodded.

Ben bit his lip, then nodded his agreement. “Cobb’s still in jail for attacking a salesman last week.”

“Yeah, well, tell him anyway. Think you can do that for us?”

“I know I can.”

“I talked to ol’ Mose today. You can ride Impala out to the Sweeney spread.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you, and... and good night.” Dean sank down on the bed, breathless from talking so much, and took a swig of laudanum.

Ben looked from one brother to the other worriedly but left.

“He’s gonna figure it out, Dean,” Sam said and took a swig of laudanum himself.

“I know,” Dean replied. “So’s Lisa.”

Sam watched him a moment before stating, “I’ll manage for tonight if....”

“Sammy, I never felt less like having sex in my life.”

“Dean, she’s the closest thing to a wife you’ve ever had. If Jess was here, I’d be happy just to spend the night in her arms.”

Dean worked at catching his breath. “Tomorrow,” he finally said. “If she’s cool with it.”

Sam nodded. “Okay.”

* * *

Wednesday night didn’t exactly go according to plan, however. Dean fell getting out of the bathtub, and Sam was in no fit state to help him up, so Lisa had to. They got him into a robe and into the brothers’ room, and then Sam not-so-subtly declared he’d sleep upstairs and skedaddled before either Dean or Lisa could object. Dean chuckled and held her hand for a moment before asking her to sit down while he caught his breath. Then he drank some laudanum to stave off the soreness he knew he’d be feeling from the jolt.

“You’re running low,” Lisa noted. “I’d better call Dr. Hostetler and order some more.”

Dean shook his head. “No, this’ll do.”

She looked at him carefully. “You’re getting ready to do something.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The dry cleaning, the haircuts, the laudanum. Sam giving us space.”

Dean met her eyes. “I want you to promise me something, Lis.”

“Anything, Dean.”

“Ben’s gonna be back any moment; I’ll need to talk to him alone. But when I’m done, I want you to come sleep with me tonight—just sleep. I’m not up to anything else.”

“All right.”

“And then tomorrow, when you see us in our best dry-cleaned clothes, I want you to promise there’ll be no questions. No surmises, no woman’s intuition. All curiosity stops right here and now. Promise me?”

Lisa just looked at him sadly.

“No deals. And no tears, Lis.”

Just then Ben came home and called to Dean from the front hall.

“In here, Ben,” Lisa called back.

Ben came in with a grin. “Oh, so I see.”

“No, you don’t see. Think it over and you’ll know why. You must be hungry.”

“No, Mom, I’m fine,” Ben replied, even though Lisa was heading to the kitchen slowly.

Lisa paused at the door before turning back to Dean and making herself reply, “I promise.”

Dean nodded. “Thank you.”

Once Lisa had left, Ben reported all of the responses he’d gotten. Marshal Thibido had even agreed to let Cobb out of jail. When he’d finished, Dean thanked him and turned out the overhead lights. “I think we both ought to get some sleep,” he added pointedly.

But Ben wouldn’t be put off. “Dean, can I just ask you something about this?”

“No, I’m exhausted. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“But I have to be out before sunrise to do the milk deliveries while Cobb’s in jail.”

“Well, then we’ll all have a busy morning.”

Disappointed, Ben nodded and headed for the door.

Dean went to the table and got his wallet. “Before you go, there’s something I want to give you.”

“No, Dean, no. No, I won’t take pay.”

“And I wouldn’t offer it, son. But you like Impala, don’t you?”

“Best horse I ever rode.”

“Used to be the best car I ever drove. May be again someday; I don’t know. Bobby didn’t explain.”

Ben stared. “You mean....”

“Yep. And she’s yours.” Dean handed him both the title he’d had Moses draw up and the keys that might someday have a use again. Then he patted Ben’s shoulder. “Now let me get some sleep.”

Ben walked slowly toward the door as Dean turned out the electric lamp on the table and sat down on the bed once more. Then he turned back. “Dean? When you asked me to do this, I didn’t realize... and-and I just hope that nothing....”

“Just take good care of my baby,” Dean interrupted. “She’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

Ben swallowed hard and turned to go. But his voice still broke when he said, “Good night, Dean.”

Once he’d left, Lisa came back. And true to her word, she simply held Dean all night.

They were all awake early the next day, though Dean didn’t actually get up until after Sam had dragged himself downstairs and they’d both gotten another hour’s worth of fitful dozing. After breakfast, they put their joint will and all of their cash, aside from a few dollars for buying a drink, into an envelope that Dean had labeled “For Lisa.” Moments later, the headstone arrived, and Sam had the deliverymen put it down on the bed. Once they’d left, Dean joined Sam to examine the plain grey granite stone:

**WINCHESTER**

**Dean Eric  
Born January 24, 1828**

**Samuel Francis  
Born May 2, 1832**

**Died**  
**1901**  


Sam had ordered it without the last date on purpose—they weren’t committing suicide, not really. This meeting at the Metropole would be their last hunt, one way or another, but they’d survived longer odds than these before. If they did die, fine; if not... well, maybe they’d be left alone at last.

“Didn’t know you even remembered my middle name,” Dean said quietly.

Sam shrugged. “Yours was Dad’s, mine was Mom’s. Easy enough.”

“Kind of nice to have an actual marker this time, even though we won’t be under it.”

“Maybe Mom and Dad will be able to be under theirs now.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Sam pulled Dean into a tight hug that lasted a good minute. Then, after mutual pounding of backs, they separated to put on their jackets and check their period weapons, Dean making sure the Colt was fully loaded and Sam putting silver in the revolvers and tucking the demon-killing knife and a knife forged in dragon blood up his sleeves. The 1911 and the Taurus they left on the nightstand, along with their pocket watches, anchoring the envelope on top of their journals. Finally, they clinked their laudanum bottles in silent salute and drained them before picking up their hats and cushions and heading down the hall to find Lisa.

She called to them from the parlor, and they came in to find her in a frilly navy blouse and coordinating skirt—not mourning per se, but close enough. Yet she was smiling genuinely as she came around the loveseat to talk to them. “You both look amazing.”

“Thank you, Lisa,” they chorused.

“Today’s Dean’s birthday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Dean replied. “We haven’t been to a saloon for a long time, and we thought we’d get a drink and celebrate.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

Lisa made a visible effort to keep smiling as she glanced out the window. “You have a beautiful day for it. Around here, they call it false spring.”

She and Dean looked at each other for a moment, and then he walked over and gave her a chaste kiss. Sam followed suit by giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“Bye, Lisa,” he said.

“Bye, Sam.”

“Goodbye, Lisa Braeden,” Dean said quietly.

“Goodbye, Dean Winchester,” she returned.

The brothers walked out shoulder to shoulder and pretended they didn’t see Lisa hurry to the parlor window to watch them walk away, tears glittering in her eyes but not falling.

* * *

Ben finished his deliveries and stationed himself on the porch of the New Hotel Carson just in time to see Thibido take Cobb’s handcuffs off and shove him into the saloon. He watched as Dobkins hailed Thibido to get another unauthorized story, as Sweeney drove up in his stupid clanky Oldsmobile, as the other three individuals—a shapeshifter, a vampire, and a probable demon, all new in town—made their way inside. Pulford must have already arrived, he surmised as he checked his watch.

Shortly before 11, the streetcar made a stop in front of the Metropole, and the unmistakable figures of the Winchesters got off. Ben wanted to run across the street, to plead with them not to go in there; six against two was hardly a fair fight. But he didn’t. He held onto the shred of hope that time and cancer hadn’t slowed them down that much, that they were still the men who’d taken out whole nests of vampires and packs of werewolves by themselves, the men who’d torched that mother changeling when he was eight.

So he watched them tuck their suit jackets behind their holsters and walk into that saloon side by side, and he braced for the shooting to start.

* * *

Although Sam scanned the saloon without seeming to do so as the brothers walked toward the bar, Dean pointedly ignored the other people in the room and focused solely on the bartender. After a pleasant exchange of greetings, Dean informed the bartender that it was his birthday and ordered a shot of the best whiskey in the house for himself and Sam. Sam looked a little surprised that Dean didn’t order him a sarsaparilla as usual, but Dean just winked at him. The bartender handed Dean the bottle and two glasses, and he and the janitor made themselves scarce.

But as the brothers drank, they used the mirror behind the bar to get a good look at where each of their slated opponents was at the time. And then it was just a game of nerves to see which of them would attack first.

In the end it was Cobb, whom Ben had reported to be nervous about the prospect of facing the brothers, and he made such an obvious move to get up that both Sam and Dean had time to dive over the bar before Cobb got off a shot. Sam distracted him by throwing a bottle to make him leave his torso unguarded and took him out with a silver bullet to the heart. He did the same to the shifter while the vampire and the demon charged the bar and found themselves on the business end of the Colt. Then Sweeney got off a shot that hit Dean in the left shoulder, but Sam was able to bury the dragon knife in Sweeney’s side before Sweeney flipped a table to use as a shield and started toward Dean. The knife didn’t kill him immediately, so Dean put a round from the Colt through the table and into Sweeney’s chest.

Sweeney threw the table aside, his wounds burning and sparking. Then he pointed at Dean and cried, “And I’ll tell you that was for Albert!” before he collapsed.

That left Patrick. He threw up a handful of cards as a smokescreen before shooting Sam’s gun out of his hand, whereupon both Sam and Dean hit the floor behind the bar. Patrick crouched low and cautiously made his way up to the bar and started to look around one end before deciding to try attacking from the other, assuming that both brothers would be facing the same way.

They weren’t. No sooner did half of Patrick’s face appear past the far end of the bar than Dean put a hole in his forehead with the Colt.

The hunt was over. And the Winchesters were wounded but alive.

Dean pushed himself up and gave Sam a hand, and they came out from behind the bar. While Dean surveyed the damage, Sam retrieved the knife from Sweeney’s side. Then they both leaned against the bar, facing the door, to catch their breath.

Ben’s pale face appeared above one of the sets of interior swinging doors—and a second later he yelled, “LOOK OUT!!”

And shotgun blasts struck both brothers from behind, fired by the janitor and the bartender—cowardly, fame-seeking amateurs, just the kind of idiots Dean had warned Ben were the most dangerous. The Winchesters weren’t killed outright, though, and while they were writhing in agony on the floor and grabbing for each other and while the civilians fumbled hurriedly to reload, Ben rushed in, grabbed Dean’s other revolver, and fired two shots into each assailant, killing both.

It was Ben’s first kill, and the shock of it left him shaking and staring wild-eyed at the handgun. He glanced down at Sam and Dean, who were watching him closely, and then back at the gun before throwing it as far away as he could.

Dean nodded and Sam smiled, and each with a hand gripping a fistful of the other’s shirt, they breathed their last.

Struggling to keep his composure, Ben pulled off his overcoat and put it over Dean’s face, then took off the light jacket he’d worn under it to put over Sam’s. Then he pulled off his hat and strode out, past a sorrowful Doc Hostetler, past the throngs of gawkers who were running to the saloon, down the street to where his mother stood with Impala, trying desperately to hold herself together. He barely looked at either of them as he turned the corner, and they quietly followed him home.


	5. Epilogue

January 25, 1971

Mary Campbell wasn’t too excited about the research project she’d just been assigned for the spring semester of her American History class. She and her parents had salted and burned enough vengeful gunfighters that the topic had grown boring, and aside from that, gunfighters were a little too much like hunters for comfort. But Mr. Williams had shot her a look when he gave her the assignment that told her not to argue.

On the plus side, she mused, it shouldn’t be too hard. She could look through her father’s old case files and write up something fairly tame.

Yet Mr. Williams asked her to stay after class that day. “Mary,” he said when she got to his desk, “I assigned you this topic because I know you’re a good researcher and because I recently came across a subject that I think could challenge you appropriately.”

“Really? What’s that?”

“The Winchester brothers.” Mr. Williams handed her a book from 1903 entitled _The Shootists: The Lives and Bloody Times of Dean and Sam Winchester_ , written by Dan Dobkins. “Now, Dobkins died in 1955, and historians have been re-examining his writings since then, but they haven’t done much with this one yet. A few of his published works have turned out to be almost complete fabrications, though no one questioned them at the time. One of the curious things about _this_ book is that the woman who owned the house where the Winchesters spent their last days sued to have the publication stopped. The suit was dismissed for lack of standing, even though the Winchesters had named her as their executor.”

Mary frowned. “Why would the court not accept her standing?”

“The only time before their deaths that the Winchesters had been to Carson City was in 1886. Lisa Braeden and her son didn’t arrive in Carson City until 1895. The judge assumed they’d named her at the last minute for lack of another contact.”

“Maybe they’d known her before, somewhere else.”

“That’s what I thought, so I tried a little more research over the summer at the National Archives. Mary, there is no sign of a Lisa Braeden existing prior to 1895. No census records, no marriage records, nothing. So then I tried to trace official records on the Winchesters, and although their trail goes back further and their birthdates are known, there’s nothing on them prior to 1861.”

“Is there any way their records might have been destroyed?”

Mr. Williams shook his head. “I doubt it. Apparently Dean was already in his early thirties when the brothers first showed up in Wyoming. _But_ pay attention to some of the aliases Dobkins records. For example, there’s at least one case where Dean is known to have used the alias Clint Eastwood.”

That pinged Mary’s radar. “Clint Eastwood?!”

“Yep. And there’s no sign that the present-day Eastwood’s grandparents had ever read Dobkins’ book to name Clinton Eastwood, Sr., after that alias. That’s not the only oddly familiar name you’ll find in there, either: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham....”

“They were Zeppelin fans,” Mary murmured, frowning down at the book.

Mr. Williams froze. “Mary, Led Zeppelin—”

“Only formed in ’68, I know.” Yet somehow the combination of names didn’t make sense otherwise. Unlike John Paul Jones, who took his stage name from the captain of the _Bonhomme Richard_ , Page, Plant, and Bonham used their given names, and their very English parents weren’t likely to have been interested in gunslingers from the American West.

So how the heck did said gunfighters know Led Zeppelin a hundred years before its formation? Were they psychic... or something stranger still?

Mr. Williams cleared his throat. “Look, Mary, I... know a little about what your dad does. I don’t know if this is his kind of thing or not. But I’m curious, and it’s evident that you’re curious now, too. Do some digging on this, would you? Your family seems to have resources that aren’t necessarily available to a high school history teacher. You can write up the brothers’ cover story for the presentation if you think you need to, but... I’d like to know more. And I’d like it to be the truth.”

Mary nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll do that.”

* * *

Samuel blinked when Mary mentioned the Winchesters to him. “The Winchester brothers?” he repeated. “They’re the ones who sent Great-uncle Jedediah those bottles of phoenix ash in the 1860s. Nobody knows where they got it or why they sent it to him. All we’ve got is one obscure text stating that ‘the ashes of the phoenix will burn the Mother’ and one mention of killing a phoenix in Samuel Colt’s journal.”

“‘Burn the Mother’?” Mary asked. “What does that mean?”

“If I remember right, it’s a reference to the Mother of All Monsters. And all that the label on the box with the ash says is, ‘Use only in case of Purgatory emergency.’”

“So... were the Winchesters _hunters_?”

“Seems so. Don’t know much else about them, though.”

So Mary dug into the Dobkins book, taking careful notes and highlighting what was probably true and what probably wasn’t. She also studied the few photos of the brothers that had been included and couldn’t shake the feeling that they reminded her both of the Campbells and of _John_ Winchester, her former schoolmate and maybe-kinda crush who was currently in the Marines, serving in Vietnam. Yet their parentage was unknown, and they never married and left no illegitimate children that Dobkins could find. She moved on to the school library, the public library, and the family library, all to no real avail. But she did manage to find out that Ben Braeden, who also had never married, still lived in the same house in Carson City. So when Samuel located a hunt near Carson City shortly before Spring Break, she wrote to request an interview, and he wrote back agreeing.

Mr. Braeden was sweeping the front steps when Mary arrived. He was tall, maybe 6'1", and had steel grey hair, kind dark eyes, and pale, freckled skin, and Mary wondered briefly if he might not be Dean Winchester’s son or grandson.

“Hello,” she called. “Is this the Braeden house?”

Mr. Braeden laughed. “That’s exactly what Dean said when they rode up that first day. Welcome, Miss Campbell.” He took her hand to shake, then looked at her more closely, and his smile faded in what seemed like shock. “Mary Campbell. Mary _Frances_ Campbell?”

“Yes, sir... but how did you know?”

He didn’t seem to hear her question as he cursed quietly. “He looked just like you.”

“Who did?”

“Dean. And Sam, too, a little, but... Dean looked _so much_ like you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Braeden.”

“Please, Mary, call me Ben. There, um... there are some things I’ve been saving for you. And there’s someone you need to meet.”

Thoroughly bewildered, Mary let him lead her inside. He gave her tea and cookies in the parlor and answered the standard questions about the Winchesters before she even had the chance to ask them. But she got the distinct sense that this version was the story she needed to give in her class presentation.

Afterward, Ben led her out to a spot in the back yard where stood the Winchesters’ marker. “They died on Dean’s birthday,” he told her as she knelt to read the inscription.

“Dean Eric and Samuel Francis,” she read aloud, and a sudden chill swept over her. She looked up at Ben. “I... I know a John Eric Winchester.”

“Yes,” Ben replied quietly, not really looking at her as she stood. “So did they.”

“They’re not there, y’know,” said another male voice behind her.

Mary gasped and jumped, spinning to see a young man with slicked-back light brown hair and laughing hazel eyes smiling at her.

Ben put an arm around her shoulders. “Mary... this is Loki. He, um... he knew Sam and Dean.”

“This is just the marker,” Loki clarified. “Their ashes are on Beta Antares IV. I stopped by just in time for the funeral, and Ben and his mom agreed that it’d be best to get them as far out of anyone else’s reach as possible.”

“Why?” Mary asked.

“Well, the easiest way to explain that is to give you the bequests they left for you.”

“... For _me_?”

“It’s complicated,” Ben replied. “But by now I’m sure you’ve figured out that the answers you’ve gotten from me so far are only the official story Loki and Mom and I agreed on, based on what the brothers themselves had said. Now it’s time you learned the truth.”

Mary bit her lip. “When were they born? I mean, for real?”

“It’s all inside. Come on.”

Feeling near the edge of a real freakout, Mary let Ben and Loki escort her inside to the room where the Winchester brothers had spent their last days. It was clean and didn’t look like a lot of the rooms she’d seen sealed off by grieving families, but it had clearly not been changed much at all in the last seventy years.

“This was Sam’s favorite chair,” Ben said quietly as he guided her into a leather chair next to a writing desk, a chair that seemed to envelop her in love. Then he gathered some leather-bound volumes off the top of the dresser and sat down across from her while Loki lounged in the doorway. “These journals are for you, Mary. And I think they’re in the order Sam and Dean would want you to look at them.” He slid the stack across to her.

Swallowing hard, she opened the top volume and picked up the letter that sat loose just inside the cover:

> _Dearest Mary,  
>  We can’t really trust anyone else with these journals, and they concern you anyway. We can’t be sure how much we’ve changed, but sometimes it’s not so easy to make sure an alternate timeline stays alternate. So please, read carefully and consider the fates of all involved. You can prevent the curse we’ve lived with all our lives. Just be careful.  
>  Love always,  
>  Your sons,  
>  Sam and Dean Winchester_

“Sons,” Mary breathed. “No, it can’t—what—” She looked up at Ben wildly.

Ben nodded. “It’s true. Turn the page.”

Mary turned the page to reveal a photograph, severely aged, but—sweet merciful—that was John Winchester, looking about 30, and... and herself. And a little boy in John’s arms, maybe four years old, and a baby in hers. Then she turned it over and almost choked when she read the faded inscription: _June 1983, John, Mary, Dean (4), Sammy (1 mo.)._

“Hey,” said Loki, and suddenly he was beside her, rubbing her back gently. “Take it easy. Breathe.”

“I don’t understand!” she cried. “How can this _be?_ ”

Loki snorted. “I’m not handlin’ this annunciation,” he told Ben, who rolled his eyes.

Then Ben reached across the desk and took Mary’s hand again. “It’s a long, very complicated story. You can read the whole thing in the journals. But as to how they ended up in 1861... well, after the Apocalypse didn’t happen, one of the chief surviving demons was after Purgatory, and it seems that the monsters started acting weird and turning as many humans as they could to get back at him. At least, that’s what one angel I talked to figured.”

Mary frowned. “Angels don’t exist.”

“Yeah, we do,” said Loki.

Mary turned and stared at him, but Ben kept going. “Anyway, the dragons managed to gather the proper sacrifice and ritual to break the Mother of All Monsters out of Purgatory, and Sam and Dean and their friend Bobby Singer figured out that phoenix ash could kill her. Only problem was, the only phoenix they knew for sure they could find was in Sunrise, Wyoming, in March of 1861. So they had an angel friend send them back... only to find out that he wasn’t so friendly anymore.”

Mary shook her head. “How do you know all this?”

“Because Bobby told me before their other angel friend, who really was a friend, sent us back to 1895 to be safe and to have a chance to say goodbye to Sam and Dean.”

“Sent... sent who?”

“Mom and me. I was born in 1999, and... I’m still not sure Dean wasn’t my dad.”

Mary slumped back in the chair, dazed and numb, unable to resist when Loki pulled her into a comforting side hug and Ben rubbed her hand gently. She just couldn’t process what she’d been told. It fit the facts, but... it didn’t make _sense_.

Ben brought her some more tea. She drank it, but it didn’t help. And she was still in a daze when Samuel returned to pick her up. Ben boxed up the journals for her and carried them out to the car while Loki settled her in the passenger seat.

“I’m afraid she’s had rather a shock, sir,” Ben told Samuel when he asked what was wrong. “But I’ll be available as long as you’re here, and she’s welcome to call or come back at any time.”

Samuel thanked him and waited until he’d driven away to look over at Mary. “A shock?”

Mary nodded. “They were hunters... their mother was a Campbell. And... I-I just can’t make sense of it all yet.”

His eyes softened. “Try, sweetheart. They were family. Family is everything.”

Mary nodded and tried to pull herself together. But it wasn’t until after supper that she was able to summon the courage to examine the first journal, which was in John’s handwriting. And though the first entries left her sobbing hysterically, she forced herself to read all of it. Then she read the brothers’, two volumes which alternated between two hands and told the story of how the Campbells and Winchesters had been manipulated into starting the Apocalypse, how Sam and Dean stopped it, and what happened after—and before, once they found themselves trapped in 1861. The final volume in the stack was the journal of Bobby Singer, which contained quite a lot of information not pertinent to the Winchesters but also quite a lot that corroborated their story.

She laughed. She cried. She yelled in frustration. She gasped in disbelief. And she knew no one, maybe not even her own father, would ever believe her.

Mary ended up going back to the Braeden house almost every day that the Campbells were in Carson City, talking through everything with Ben and Loki (the name he insisted she use, even though Sam and Dean had revealed his true name and nature). Ben showed her the enchanted car that had been Dean’s horse for many years and still ran like new, the caches of weapons and information that the Winchesters had left to Ben in their will, the place where their last hunt had finally claimed their lives for good. Loki told stories that even Ben hadn’t heard before. And they debated what Mary should do with the information in the journals—not only in terms of sharing with others, but also in terms of her own future choices. Azazel was dead, and Sam and Dean couldn’t be brought back again, but there was still the chance that either another demon or a rogue angel like Zachariah would try to force the pattern to repeat.

The only conclusion they reached before Mary had to head back to Lawrence was that she needed protection. So Ben gave her the demon-killing knife with the admonition to keep it on her at all times, and Loki promised to keep an eye on her as much as he could without attracting undue attention. She thanked them both and promised Ben that she’d stay in touch.

She was surprised, however, when Mr. Williams walked up while she was helping her parents unload the car once they’d gotten home. “Hi, Mary!” he called pleasantly. “Have a good break?”

“Hi, Mr. Williams!” she replied. “Spent most of it researching, actually.”

“Oh, really? Find anything?”

Mary suddenly had reservations about telling Mr. Williams the whole crazy truth, and she was glad the journals were safely upstairs. So she repeated the cover story she’d learned from Ben, that the Winchesters’ parents had lived too far out on the frontier to be covered by census records and so on.

Mr. Williams shook his head. “Mary, Mary, Mary. I asked you to find the truth.” And the garage light flickered.

Mary steeled herself. “That’s what I found out, Mr. Williams. Good night.”

“No, Mary.” His eyes turned black from corner to corner as he grabbed her and shoved her backward against the car. “You’re gonna tell me the whole truth about those brothers, or I’m going to kill your parents. Very. Slowly.”

Reacting on pure instinct, Mary grabbed the knife she’d concealed in her jacket and plunged it into his heart. Then she screamed when he lit up with hellfire as he fell.

Her bruises and such eyewitness testimony as the police were able to gather made the incident a clear-cut case of self-defense, but the remaining year of high school was extremely awkward. She did tell her parents the whole truth, however, and they agreed—somewhat reluctantly—to let her quit hunting and go back to Carson City to work as Ben’s housekeeper as long as she finished school first. Ben was nearing 90, Deanna noted, and he was sure to need help around the house sooner or later.

Ben was overjoyed to help Mary in this way. “When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be a hunter,” he confessed. “And I still think it’s important; I help out with research when I can. But that day at the Metropole... I finally understood why Dean had been so anxious not to let me start hunting and so afraid that he was some horrible, hardened killer who wasn’t fit to sit at Mom’s table. So that was that. I’ll defend myself, but I won’t hunt. And you shouldn’t have to, either.”

A year or so later, Mary got a more pleasant surprise: John had returned from Vietnam and heard all about what had happened, and he turned up on Ben’s front porch with a ring and a dozen roses. Ben hustled him into the parlor, well within the house’s strong wards, and tested him with holy water before letting Mary come in and hear his proposal.

“John,” she replied, “there’s a lot you don’t know about me. Stuff that could put you in danger.”

“Will you tell me the truth? The whole truth?”

“Will you believe me if I do? Even if it’s crazy? Even if it’s monsters and demons and time travel?”

“I promise,” he said sincerely.

She nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll tell you.”

“Then I still want to marry you.”

She bit her lip. “Unless you change your mind afterward... then yes.”

John kissed her and slipped the ring on her finger. And over supper she told him everything. He was understandably confused and disturbed at first, but he came around after going for a walk and having to be rescued from a hellhound by Loki.

And so it was that Mary Campbell married John Winchester in the parlor of the Braeden House in Carson City, Nevada, under the watchful eyes of their grandfatherly (possible) grandson and a rebel archangel. John took a crash course in basic supernatural self-defense and got a job at a garage in Carson City, and he and Mary stayed with Ben, who gave them the Impala as a wedding gift. There were attempts on John’s life; there were attempts on Mary’s life. None succeeded. Both Dean and Sam were eventually born on schedule without incident, and November 2, 1983, consisted largely of a tense watchfulness on the part of the adults inside the house and a few reports by neighbors of prowlers around the house. No demons got in, and the window in which Sam’s blood could be corrupted was closed forever.

Two nights later, Ben chose to spend the night in the downstairs bedroom for the first time since 1901... and died in his sleep at the age of 100, a peaceful smile on his lips and his journal on the desk, open to the final entry: _11/2/83: Mission accomplished._


End file.
